We return to the Top Chef house with Grayson missing Chris, and the reveal that Ed sleeps in a button down shirt and boxers. Business up top, party underneath! There’s no time to ponder this because it’s time to head back to the kitchen, where Padma awaits them with my dream: a table of 80,000 pancakes. The chefs wonder who the guest judge will be, with Grayson guessing Miley Cyrus, which is incorrect because if it were Miley, the pancakes would be replaced with a giant bong.

Instead, the guest judge is Pee Wee Herman, who non-zygotes may remember from his TV show, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. They have 20 minutes to make pancakes for Pee Wee. Paul has inherited the liquid nitrogen throne from Chris and is making some kind of champagne concoction with it.

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When it’s time to taste, Pee Wee makes many weird faces and messes with the chefs by telling all of them theirs is the best pancake he’s ever had, which they seem genuinely confused by. When it’s over, Ed wins the challenge with his “Crispy Pancake Tidbits with Brulee’d Marshmallows, Strawberries, Blueberries, & Bacon.” Can I just say I’d order the hell out of that at brunch? Because I would.

The elimination challenge is to make a family-style lunch for Pee Wee at the Alamo. The chefs have $100, a bike, two turntables, and a microphone. The hard part is they must find a restaurant to cook their food in. Pee Wee tells the chefs his preferences, which amount to : spicy, he loves chicken and he likes to eat healthy to keep that physique.

The chefs get their bikes, backpacks, and maps and are off to the farmer’s market, where they begin their shopping. The chefs all find restaurants to cook in, which conveniently seem to already have camera crews set up at them and employees who are willing to act as sous chefs for our cheftestants! They are so lucky. Lindsay finds a place to cook in, Mad Hatter’s, but instead of beginning to cook, she starts to scavenge some more, even running into Grayson at Rosario’s.

While Lindsay is out, Sara swoops in and takes her space at mad hatter’s. Eventually, the producers find Lindsay finds a place to cook, Frank’s Hot Dog Stand, where their staff conveniently all have time to help her out. The 2 hour cooking time is over and the chefs bike over to the Alamo. Grayson decides it’s a great idea to bike with a hot pan of chicken in her hand.

At the Alamo, it’s our lucky day, because flawless queen Gail Simmons, looking like she’s had an incredible vacation is BACK, but with a bit less cleavage than she is usually rocking. The sweaty chefs come out with all their dishes. Their menu can best be described as chicken five ways.

Pee Wee is a great guest judge, much like Charlize Theron was a few weeks ago and charms the judges. He even suggests a weekly lunch with Tom Collicchio, which would be the MOST AWESOME THING IN THE UNIVERSE.

At judge’s table, Grayson gets criticized for her messy stuffed chicken, with Gail pointing out that while it was supposed to be healthy, she filled it with cheese and bacon. Sarah’s underseasoned eggs also get called out. Sarah acts surprised but she KNOWS WHAT SHE DID.

Lindsay’s beef cheek stuffed zucchini wins the challenge, which is great because she looks like she’s on the verge of a breakdown the entire judge’s table, even though Pee Wee loved her zucchini boats!

During deliberations, Pee Wee says all the food needed ketchup, bringing some much needed levity into the usual pretentious downer that is these discussions. Padma calls Grayson‘s dish out for having the “biggest chicken breast she’s ever seen in her life.” Clearly she’s never been to a Claim Jumper.

Grayson gets sent home, and says she doesn’t regret anything. Well, except maybe that dish she cooked tonight. And that time her choice of a dish got her team mate sent home.

The final four head back to judges’ table, where they are told about the Last Chance Kitchen web show, and that one of the eliminated chefs will be back. I want it to be Beverly, if only because it will annoy Sarah, and when Sarah is annoyed, I laugh.

TELL US: DO YOU LIKE PEE WEE AS A GUEST JUDGE? DO YOU THINK GRAYSON SHOULD HAVE BEEN SENT HOME? WHO DO YOU WANT TO RETURN TO TOP CHEF?

Previously on Top Chef: Beverly gets sent home and Charlize Theron was awesome and beautiful.

We return to Top Chef:Texas with the chefs in the stew room going over Beverly‘s departure. Grayson talking-heads that she’ll miss her while the other chefs are either hiding their feelings or just don’t seem to care.

All of a sudden an angel walks in, a.k.a. Charlize Theron, and she thanks the chefs and calls herself a “huge nerd.” No, Charlize, people currently on their 98th consecutive hour of playing Skyrim while on a Mountain Dew drip are huge nerds. You are a pretty actress.

With the stew room properly blessed, we move on to the rest of the episode and the quick fire challenge, this time being judged by Padma, Emeril Lagasse and Cat Cora, who also has a new Bravo show coming up soon, Around The World In 80 Plates (Bravo doing cross-promotion, SHOCKING!!)

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The chefs are broken up into three teams: Grayson and Chris; Ed and Paul; and Lindsay and Sarah. In the absolute worst dubbing job of all time, Padma tells us that the chefs must complete three skill challenges (de-shining and deboning shrimp, making fresh pasta, and shaving corn) before making a dish using all of those ingredients in 30 minutes!

Everyone gets to work. Grayson talks and talks, which Lindsay bad mouths in her interview because Lindsay hates joy. Everyone more or less completes the challenge, except that Paul forgets to saute the shrimps for their dish, so they don’t get the chance to win.

In the end, even Grayson messing up her pasta can’t stop Chris and her from winning the challenge, which also means they get $10,000 dollars. Cue the cute family photos of Chris, his wife and their baby! He even gets a shout-out at the sponsor and thanks Healthy Choice! Good job, Bravo minion!

Poorly dubbed Padma now announces the twist to the episode — their partner is now their opponent for the elimination challenge, which is to make a dish for 200 people attending a fund raiser for the San Antonio Food Bank. The teams decide their dishes, which they announce to Padma, who declares all of the choices to be too heavy and announces the second twist: they must now make their chosen dishes healthy, because HEALTHY CHOICE is the sponsor.

The chefs groan because fat is what chefs run on. I groan, too. We run off to Whole Foods, where we get to watch the chefs be demanding and request all the ground turkey and agave syrup! Because those are HEALTHY CHOICES. Except Whole Foods doesn’t even sell that brand. Oops. The Whole Foods dude who makes fun of Lindsay behind her back after she asks the employee to accompany her through the store with a cart full of watermelons is my hero.

When the time comes to cook the healthy food, we learn that none of the cheftestants know what a block party is. This is strange because block parties are pretty common. Are these Amish chefs? Who are these cheftestants who grew up without block parties? In any case, Chris mentions that the the go-to in healthy food is seasoning, which why we see Chris dumping an entire container of cayenne seasoning into his chicken. That’ll do it!

We get to the party and all the nice-looking attendees arrive , all bearing canned foods for the food bank. Grayson doesn’t budget enough time to make her sandwiches in advance, so she must make her sandwiches to order. Ed puts out his steam buns to make his short-rib sandwiches open faced and doesn’t realize folks are mad greedy and he actually yells at a kid not to take too many pieces of bread.

The judges arrive, and look Ryan Scott from Top Chef Season 4 is here! He and Padma exchange some scripted words about the charity the meal is supporting and they move on. Dana Cowin from Food and Wine magazine is here, which scares Paul.

The judges try Paul and Ed’s Korean food first. Padma calls Ed’s short rib sandwich “hard and dry” and I could make a Salman Rushdie joke here, but I won’t! Because I’m classy. They stop at Grayson and Chris’s table and appear to like Chris‘s food a bit more. Final stop: Lindsay and Sarah. Lindsay is the clear winner, especially since Dana’s side salad was a mess.

Finally, we arrive at judge’s table. Grayson, Paul and Lindsay are the winners, chosen by the diners at the block party! Yay, all of Paul’s pacing was for a good cause! Before we get to the overall winner, Tom Colicchio questions Grayson’s choice of chicken salad for a block party. In hot weather. We’re all questioning her choice, too. Grayson sasses Tom back and says she wanted to make elevated chicken salad and that a meatball was the boring decision. Tom disagrees.

It doesn’t matter, because Paul wins with his turkey lettuce cup! He wins $15,000 from Healthy Choice. I hope no one tells him about the clause that he can only spend that money on Healthy Choice frozen meals (that’s a joke and I made it up. He can spend it on anything he wants, like Healthy Choice canned green vegetables.)

The winners go back to the stew room and call in the losers: Ed, Sarah and Chris. As the losers walk over to Judges Table, Grayson has a fit over her chicken salad comments, realizing the error in talking back to Tom.

Tom delivers the first blow and tells Ed he took all the good out of short ribs (the fat!) instead of genuinely trying to make a healthy dish like Paul did with the turkey. Chris gets yelled at for not making the sandwiches to order, but gets points for not ratting out Grayson and letting the judges know that only happened because she failed to manage her time properly, which a lesser cheftestant would have done.

The chefs get sent away and Tom nails it in his assessment of Chris: lots of great ideas, but can not execute anything properly. It wasn’t surprising at all to see that Chris gets sent home. Grayson blames herself for making the chicken salad choice that got Chris sent home, and she’s probably mostly right.

Next week: Pee-wee Herman is our celebrity judge and the producers find more ways to torture the chefs in the heat by making them ride bikes!

TELL US: HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT CHRIS’S ELIMINATION? DO YOU THINK IT’S GRAYSON’S FAULT FOR PICKING CHICKEN SALAD? DO YOU THINK SHE WAS RIGHT TO TALK BACK TO TOM?

We rejoin the chefs who are still in the stew room with Sarah still, well stewing about Beverly’s win. In a very poorly edited scene, we see Tom come in and announce that the gang is heading back to San Antonio, mixed in with Sarah gasping. That, mixed in with Padma‘s strange voice-over at the opening makes me think the show is being edited on iMovie on someone’s Macbook. Get it together!

The chefs go home in cars separated by gender and Lindsay is still complaining that her job during Restaurant Wars was hard and that “others” (i.e. Beverly) dropped the ball except they kind of didn’t. Winning the challenge is the opposite of dropping the ball.

Eventually, we land back at the kitchen. Hottie and Top Chef semi-regular Eric Ripert is back! The chefs spy a conveyor belt in the back of the kitchen and Ed, master of stating the obvious, says this is going to suck. Chef Ripert adorably reads his lines and Padma lets us in on the quickfire challenge: they must make a “sophisticated dish” using three items from the conveyor belt. But, the longer they wait to get their three items, the less time they will have to cook. See? It’s a riddle. The winner gets immunity.

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Immediately, Ed grabs macadamia nuts and a few seconds later sauerkraut, apparently confusing “sophisticated” for effing gross. Those wacky production folks keep taking the lobster on and off the belt, which is driving Chris insane. Beverly starts to make food from the pantry before grabbing her conveyor belt items, which she says will give her more time to cook. This is what we call foreshadowing.

Everyone runs around, the music gets crazy, and eventually Chris gets his lobster. When time is up, Beverly did not leave enough time to get her curried rice krispies onto her plate, which makes her very sad. Ripert and Padma make their way on every dish, giving the usual zero feedback. When they get to Beverly they ask to try the unplated curried rice. What a surprise, Chef Ripert loves it with the salmon!

In the end, Ripert picks Sarah, Lindsay and Beverly as his favorites, but can not grant Beverly the win, so he goes with Lindsay’s Bouillabaisse in Fennel-Pernod Broth. She wisely notes it is a backhanded compliment. Ed says she should have just cheated and thrown the rice up in the air to see if it landed on the plate. That’s actually not a bad strategy for life in general.

In any case, it’s time to move on when the elimination challenge is announced and actress Charlize Theron walks in, this episode’s guest judge. Everyone temporarily loses their mind and reason — like everyone does around a genuinely famous person. The challenge: everyone must cook one course in a wicked meal, epic product placement for Charlize’s new film: Snow White And The Huntsman. Unlike former starlets who’ve graced Top Chef‘s kitchen, Charlize has no finicky dietary restrictions (the winner for that has got to be Zooey Deschanel, a gluten-free, soy-free vegan when she was on Top Chef Masters. They served her deep-fried air.)

The chefs go shopping at Whole Foods, where Beverly is shown acting like a 5 year old let loose in a Toys R Us. Grayson calls her a “bulldog” and says she’s always sneaking up behind you. Later on, at the house, while giving each other a pep talk, Ed mentions everyone has to play fair and that Beverly is always pushing people out of the way. Are they talking about the same Beverly who just took great pains not to cheat in a challenge?

Next, we head to the kitchen where the chefs have two hours to prepare their courses. Paul has something like 35 pots on the stove and is very stressed out. Grayson is preparing a black chicken, which I never even knew existed. Beverly decides to make halibut along with “forbidden” rice (illegal in 30 states) in order to show Lindsay that damn it, she’s good enough, she’s smart enough and she CAN cook halibut.

Back in fantasy land, the judges all walk in and banter with Charlize. Everything the beautiful movie star has to say is so funny! What proceeds is a drama-free love fest of a meal. Everyone loves everything. They love Sarah’s blood-red risotto, they loved Grayson’s black chicken slaughter meal, they loved Beverly’s halibut, they loved Chris’s liquid nitrogen dessert. They even loved Paul’s bloody handprint on his dish. Chef Ripert was the only one who wondered if Paul was wearing gloves. It was all positive, which is a nightmare for us recappers. Think of the bloggers!

Someone, however, has to go but not before they lavish some more compliments on the chefs at judges table and Ed tells Charlize he is “here to please.” Thanks for saying what we were all thinking, bro! The winner of the challenge is Paul’s “murder song”. They cheap out the prizes again, and for his efforts, he wins two tickets to the premiere of Snow White and the Huntsman. At least no one pretends to be excited about it. They may as well have said the prize was a DVD copy of Monster.

On the bottom this week were Grayson, Sarah and Beverly for relatively minor mistakes, but someone’s gotta go home because this show doesn’t have enough money to extend production another week. Beverly says she made a more elegant dish, because she didn’t want to be “wicked and grotesque.” It provides an excellent cue for Grayson to get a slam in at her, when she explains that she took the challenge literally and stepped it up a notch.

During deliberations, the judges predictably appreciated Grayson and Sarah’s more interesting takes on the theme versus Beverly’s approach to play it safe. And for that, Beverly is sent packing. Sarah and Grayson hug her as they walk out to the stew room, but you can tell they are gleeful inside. Her exit montage is brief and it’s on to the next one.

Next week: chefs against chefs! Chairs get knocked over. And Tom is going to make some fans very happy when he wears a short-sleeved shirt at judge’s table.

TELL US: WERE YOU HAPPY WITH THE JUDGES DECISION TO SEND BEVERLY HOME? DID YOU LIKE CHARLIZE’S APPEARANCE ON THE SHOW? DO YOU THINK THE PRIZES ARE GETTING CHEAP?

The chefs walk into a completely empty space, followed by Padma Lakshmi and Hugh Acheson who tell them that their elimination challenge this week will be to open and manage an Olive Garden location. Whoever can make the Tour of Italy the fastest will win access to the coveted breadsticks recipe. Finally, a challenge for us normal folks!

Actually, that never happened, but it was kinda close. Padma tells us it’s that time of the season again — for the restaurant wars challenge. Yay! This time, they will be separated by gender, which means we are in for some wonderful talking head commentary on girls ruling and boys drooling. Or, the opposite as Edward kicks off the trash talking by saying that the men are stronger chefs. You’ll want to remember that statement, folks.

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The teams split up with 45 minutes to menu plan. This time around, every chef will be responsible for a dish and the chefs will also be responsible for decor. The women decide on organic, rustic, homey food and name their creation Every Damn Restaurant You’ve Ever Been To In The Past Two Years, or as they call it, Bushel for short. The men plan out some kind of Asian-inspired menu and name their baby Canteen. They’re off to Sur La Table and Whole Foods to spend their $7,500 budget.

When we return, Chris compares the restaurant wars competition to some Star Trek thing but his glasses are too distracting and I stopped listening. The men go about preparing for their restaurant opening in a mostly non-dramatic fashion, except they decide on some complex notation system for the tickets because it’s good to make a challenging situation harder on yourself.

Other than a random woman complaining that her wine is warmer than her meal nothing really goes wrong until the pesky judges arrive. The salmon is served without mushrooms (oops!) and Padma notices that things seem to be going awry at the chef’s station. The boys decide to switch it up since the kitchen is slowing down and the ticketing system isn’t working out. Eventually service ends and the boys return home to debrief and soak in a vat of Shiner Bock.

Coming back from commercial, we are transported to the women’s preparation, which involves a fight over simple syrup. The ladies are kind of a mess. Bushel opens and the judges are quicker to arrive this time. Hugh notes that the women did not have an open kitchen and Tom notes that there is a huge line, with Lindsay, who is serving as front of the house nowhere to be found. She is dealing with a diner who sends her halibut back, a dish she conceived, but Beverly prepared. She gets yelled at for the umpteenth time this episode because everything bad is Beverly’s fault.

The women do not have it together at all with Lindsay running around. The judges clearly love Beverly‘s spare ribs the most. At the end of service, Grayson and Sarah actually mention that perhaps it wasn’t Beverly’s cooking that ruined the halibut, but Lindsay’s techniques. Meanwhile, the judges decide their fate: while the guys are better at service, the food was better at the ladies’ restaurant.

The judges see the women first. After making them sweat for a while with comments about the long wait for seating and Lindsay’s disappearance, Padma tells the ladies they were the favored restaurant which makes them squeal, like women do. Hooray!!!

Everyone loved the food, and in the end, Beverly wins the challenge much to the chagrin of sour puss Sarah, who’s head promptly explodes. Beverly is the winner of a big ass bottle of wine and a tour and visit to their Napa winery. Afterwards, Sarah says Lindsay was the one who deserved more praise because she’s in love with her.

The boys are called in and it was everyone’s least favorite, even amongst the diners. The judges question all the mistakes in the boys’ food from the missing Italian flavors, the use of powdered coconut in the almond joy and the flat pork belly. The boys all mumble some answers but don’t really have anything substantive to say for themselves. We all know it won’t really matter.

In deliberation, the judges decide the almond joy was the best dish, despite the coconut flub while universally hating Ty’s crab and shrimp salad. The boys march back in, and Tom, in his paternal style tells the boys they are disappointing failures. Unsurprisingly, Ty is asked to pack his knives and go. But, his parents are still proud of him. Everyone hugs, says their love-yous, and Ty fades away.

Next week: Charlize Theron demands a heart on a silver platter. Sarah rips her own out and hands it over.

TELL US – THOUGHTS ON THIS EPISODE? DID THE JUDGE’S GET IT RIGHT WITH TY’S ELIMINATION?

Top Chef returns for the ninth season of Bravo’s competition cooking show! This time they are taking the “cheftestants” on a tour of Texas culinary hotspots: San Antonio, Dallas and Austin in Top Chef: Texas!

Returning judges Tom Colicchio, Padma Lakshmi and Gail Simmons will be joined by Emeril Lagasse and Hugh Acheson along with special guests Charlize Theron, Pee-wee Herman, Cat Cora, John Besh, Tim Love and Patti LaBelle.

And proving that all things are bigger in Texas, this season the competition starts out with a record 29 cheftestants whittled down to the usual 16 during the premiere!

Those 16 chefs will then embark on a three-city culinary tour of Texas to compete for $100,000 and a feature in Food & Wine Magazine. The catch? None of the 29 chefs starting out the competition know that 13 of them will be going home almost immediately. Oops! “This season’s raising the level of intensity pretty fast,” reveals contestant Chaz Brown in the preview clip. Fittingly, some of the other contestants don’t take the news so well.

A clip of the season premiere is below! Top Chef: Texas airs tonight on Bravo (10/9c). Are you ready to get your grub on?

ARE YOU EXCITED ABOUT THE NEW SEASON OF TOP CHEF? WILL YOU BE WATCHING?

In a surprising new report, former Top Chef: Just Desserts finalist Morgan Wilson has been indicted on child pornography charges.

Morgan, 38, was arrested last December in his hometown of Plano, TX after undercover investigators discovered file transfers from his computer that allegedly featured images and videos of children, from toddler-aged on, engaged in sexual acts. Morgan also attempted to share these files.

When Plano police officers searched his residence and showed Morgan the incriminating images he admitted he had viewed the images and signed and dated them to indicate he agreed with the police. He was taken into custody and released on $10,000 bail with a stipulation that he have no computer access without monitoring software.

Earlier this month Morgan was indicted on three felony counts of possession with intent to promote child pornography and faces up to 10-years in prison if convicted. He is scheduled to go before a judge on Oct 27^th.

Prior to this incident, Morgan was employed as the Executive Pastry Chef at The Ritz-Carlton, Dallas, but he has since been let go. “He is no longer employed here,” a marketing manager for the company informed the NY Daily News. Bravo has not released any statements related to the matter.

Morgan starred in the first season of Top Chef: Just Desserts in late 2010 and was known for intense, often volatile demeanor. He is also the father to a young son and is reportedly engaged, according to his Facebook page.

THOUGHTS ON THE SITUATION AND THE NEWS?

Go big or go home is the motto for Top Chef season 9 as Bravo has just announced the show will be heading to Texas!

Even more surprising is the addition of two new judges. Famed chef, restaurateur and former Food network star Emeril Lagasse and acclaimed chef Hugh Acheson have been added to the judging panel for the all new season.

Returning to join Emeril and Hugh at the judge’s table are host Padma Lakshmi and head judge, chef Tom Colicchio, alongside judge Gail Simmons.

The new season will embrace the Lone Star State’s adage that all things are bigger as in a series first, the production will head to three cities within the season – Austin, Dallas and San Antonio.

Season nine also promises to showcase many surprising twists and turns and never-before-seen challenges and events. Bravo has yet to announce the premiere date but “Top Chef: Texas” will air later this fall.

In the meantime, the second season of “Top Chef Just Desserts” will premiere Aug. 24 at 9/8c on Bravo with 14 pastry chefs competing to out-bake their competition. The winning chef will receive $100,000, a feature in Food & Wine magazine and a showcase at the Annual Food & Wine Cayman Cookout.

Photo by: David Giesbrecht /Bravo

TELL US – EXCITED ABOUT THE NEW SEASON OF TOP CHEF? WILL YOU BE WATCHING TOP CHEF JUST DESSERTS?

The NY Post is reporting that during a recent “Summer by Bravo” commercial shoot this week, some of the Bravo housewives felt snubbed by Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi.

According to the post, other Bravolebrities Kyle Richards, Nene Leakes, Patti Stanger, Jill Zarin, and Lisa Vanderpump arrived at 8 a.m. in Brooklyn to film the promo. Padma then arrived three hours later as scheduled with an entourage of six to a private room, brushing past the others without a greeting.

This apparently led to some whispers and gossip by some of the Bravo housewives. A source overheard one star hiss, “It takes a village to raise a child,” citing the entourage around Padma’s dressing area playing with her 14-month-old daughter, Krishna.

A witness said, “They took all of the women’s bags that had been left in a dressing room and threw them into a hallway so Padma could sit separately with her baby in between shoots.”

Top Chef judge Gail Simmons however comes to Padma’s defense. “We didn’t know a lot of the women [who were there]. It’s not like we work together on a regular basis. I met a lot of people on the set for the first time,” said Gail. “It’s not like we’re holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya.’”

Gail added, “I don’t think I spoke to most people, either. You are there to do a job. She [Padma] was with her child. I would think that anyone could understand that, and she’s still nursing, which is also not a public thing to do. What’s there to complain about? It’s not high school. We’re all professionals.” Millionaire Matchmaker star Patti added, “We all thought her baby was beautiful.”

A rep for Bravo tells the Post there were no designated dressing rooms. And Padma’s rep sniped, “I think this is a nonsensical item from a ‘Housewife’ who is jealous. It’s going to make Padma look bad, and it’s just not true . . . she didn’t get any special treatment.” Meow!

No word yet on how this article made it’s way to the Post though oddly enough one of the above names has a show debuting tonight on Bravo.

TELL US – THOUGHTS ON THIS STORY?

Following last week’s dramatic finale, the Top Chef All Stars reunion airs tonight on Bravo at 10/9c.

On the reunion special hosted Andy Cohen, we will get to see all of the all-star food fighters dish on their raw antics and well-done dramas of Season 8. Show host Padma Lakshmi and judges Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons will appear on the show. All week, the network has teased a clip showing Tom and Elia Aboumrad, first contestant to be eliminated this season who might or might not still be bitter, having some words of exchange. That preview clip is below.

It seems Elia’s beef with Tom (pun intended) stems from the comments she made back in December following her elimination from the show. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Elia accused Tom of selling out due to fame. “He has become a very different person. He has become someone who is not all about the food anymore,” said Elia. “He’s not all about supporting farmers markets. He’s all about high-fructose corn syrup and there’s only corn-fed beef on all of his menus now.”

Tom however denied Elia’s claims stating that his ad for Coca Cola was for Diet Coke (which has no high-fructose corn syrup) and that he does buy food from local farmers. “I would say I’m probably buying more local produce at all of my restaurants, especially in Vegas. We get a truckload of stuff that comes from the Santa Monica market and from California farmers three times a week,” said Tom.

Meanwhile, runner-up Mike Isabella opens up about losing out to Richard Blais in an interview with TV Giude. “I thought I won. I’ve never gotten comments like that before in both seasons,” Mike reveals. “Regardless, I did win. … It was a personal victory. To be on All-Stars and to make it that far,” added Mike. Below are some excerpts from Mike’s interview -

Everyone said you were a different chef in the Bahamas. What kind of training did you do during the three-month break?
Mike: I knew that I barely got out of New York. I kept saying to myself, “Push through, push through. Let’s go back and keep training.” … When I went back home, I started eating differently, I started seeing a trainer, I started working out to get my mental [health] stronger. I was fortunate that I was opening a restaurant and didn’t have to work every day, so I was working in different chefs’ restaurants throughout D.C. … I was really fired up. I was changing things up.

You talk a lot of smack and some fans thought you were dismissive of female chefs. What do you have to say about that?
Mike: A chef is a chef. When I say, like, “Michelle Bernstein is one of the best female chefs,” I was just giving an explanation. I wasn’t saying she’s not as good as males. She’s one of the best chefs in the country. Period. She’s an icon to me. It has nothing to do with being a guy or a girl. I joke a lot. People take it the way they want. What they don’t see is the whole conversation. … If you talk to anyone — people from my season to this season — they [will tell you] I’m very sarcastic. I thought going into the competition that Blais was the best chef there and I wanted to compete against him. … If he was a girl, I would’ve still wanted to compete against him.

What’s the latest on Graffiato?
Mike: We should hopefully open up in the next few weeks — late spring. You’ll see some similarities with some of the dishes you saw in the finale. It’s going to be a great restaurant. It’s right in the heart of D.C. It’s Italian-inspired dishes, with home touches, wood-oven cooking. We’re just so excited to get it going.

Mike also revealed that Bryan Voltaggio, season 6 runner-up is an investor in his new restaurant. Interesting that Mike was asked about being dismissive towards female chefs as some fans of the show have criticized it for being “anti-female.”

And finally, Top Chef Masters will be making it’s debut tonight following the reunion show with new host Curtis Stone.

TELL US – THOUGHTS ON ELIA’S COMMENTS? SOUR GRAPES? PLUS THOUGHTS ON MIKE’S INTERVIEW & TONIGHT’S REUNION? IS TOP CHEF ANTI-FEMALE?

A day after his big win on Top Chef: All Stars, 39-year-old chef Richard Blais is speaking out via a new interview with Entertainment Weekly. In excerpts below, Richard explains why he always appeared insecure about his dishes, his feelings on chicken oyster-gate today plus his next plans.

How He Chose His Final Dishes – “Most of it is on the fly, like, here are the ingredients you’re given. I tried to focus on picking out my favorite ingredients. Hamachi is a fish I really love. The black cod has such a beautiful fat content that it’s easy to cook, especially for a lot of people.”

On Why He Always Doubted Himself - “On Top Chef, we’re getting reviewed every single Wednesday night, and in reality, every day. So you’re just seeing a little bit more intense version of that. But I think all good chefs do that. They analyze and maybe over-analyze the tiniest details.”

On Being A Favorite To Win It All – “There was definitely a tremendous amount of support on social media. It’s such an honor to have people root and cheer for you, and to walk down the street and have people say, “Oh you should’ve won your first season,” and “We’re rooting for you this time.” I definitely got the sense that maybe everybody else thought I was a favorite, but internally I never bought into it.”

When asked about oyster-gate, Richard states it is completely “squashed” and that while Mike might have been influenced by his idea, he did not steal his recipe. For the time being, Richard is still a partner at Flip Burger but reveals he has some new projects ahead that he can’t discuss just yet.

Meanwhile, it seems the folks behind Top Chef can breathe a sigh of relief today as some fans of the show actually threatened to stop watching if Blais did not win. In fact, one fan tweeted to judge Tom Colicchio before the finale aired and stated that all faith would be lost in Tom and the show if Richard lost. Tom replied, “if Richard doesn’t win perhaps you should loose faith in Richard.”

As we all saw, Richard did indeed win which however brings us to an interesting question. If Richard, who appeared to be a much better competitor than Mike Isabella based on wins (9 wins to Mike’s 4), had lost the final challenge hence the competition, would that have been fair? This also seems to be the criticism with contestant Tiffany Derry making it to the final 4 over other competitors such as Dale Talde, who won way more challenges than she did.

Let’s compare the two contestants shall we -

Tiffany – Won 2 quickfires and zero elimination challenges. In the bottom 7 times.

Dale T. – Won 4 quickfires and 3 eliminations challenges. In the bottom twice.

Dale came in 6th while Tiffany made it to the final 4. And oh yeah, both of Tiffany’s wins came in group challenges. Numbers don’t lie and from looking at the above stats, it seems absurd that Dale was sent packing first. This isn’t to criticize Tiffany or put down her culinary talents, but once again, numbers don’t lie.

In Tiffany’s defense, she doesn’t make the rules which leads us to believe it might be time for the show to make some rule changes, taking into consideration the overall season performance, and not just one challenge when it comes to the elimination rounds. The ‘Top Chef‘ title shouldn’t go to someone who got hot in the final challenges, or someone who was mediocre all season long and managed to hide in the middle of the pack.

The Top Chef title should go to the contestant who excelled consistently over a season’s entirety, like Richard Blais. We can’t help but sit and imagine a finale battle between Richard and Dale. Now that would have been something to watch. Fans of the show also seemed to believe Mike was no competition for Richard as our poll question of who deserved to win before the finale aired garnered Richard 84% of the votes. A similar poll from UsWeekly gave Richard 86% of the votes. Something tells us those poll numbers would have been much different had Dale been in Mike’s shoes.

While Mike did end up giving Richard a run for his money, sorta, on the finale, fans of the show still overwhelmingly believed Richard deserved the title. A PEOPLE.com poll had 86% of the viewers agreeing with the show’s end results.

And though the finale showdown between Richard and Mike appeared extremely close on television, Melissa Maerz of the LA Times disagrees. The reason? Maerz was one of the lucky few who actually got to taste the finale dishes during Bravo’s finale party on Wednesday.

According to Maerz, it was not a close call at all. Maerz states all of Richard’s dishes were superb, describing his hamachi dish as “astoundingly delicious and clean-tasting, it was like a magical fish that’s spent its whole life swimming upstream into a Brita water filter.”

As for Mike, his halibut “was the worst dish by far, flavorless and cold, with a slightly sweaty texture, and the overly sweet kumquats lent it an aftertaste of jelly doughnut.” His pork shoulder with pepperoni sauce was “as if someone had nursed a tender baby pig from a bottle of liquid pizza.” Ouch. Maerz however adds that the dishes were not prepared by the all-stars themselves, but rather by a team of chefs.

TELL US – SHOULD TOP CHEF CHANGE THE WAY CONTESTANTS ARE JUDGED? OR IS THE CURRENT FORMULA IDEAL?